Ranchlands: Bison Season (Episode 4) | History

we're trying to move maybe 12 1500 head majority of the herd and that's so big that spread out that it's hard to keep them going in the right direction so you got the bear tail in back there they're starting to go over you're not going to be able bring them in today or at least now okay so we got some Buffalo coming here this is my favorite time of the year I've always liked fall I like working in it the animals are fat from the summer they're lazing around in the last dog days of summer bison seasons they had and bison season was a time when we bring an entire Buffalo herd in to harvest the animals that were going to sell for cash flow there's a huge number of details that all have to be prepared a lot of moving parts the plant days of all of these bison look like there's about a thousand 1,200 head here all together move them all into this next pasture over here spend the next couple days getting everything into one dicker so we make the move everything's together as much as possible when the nature conservancy purchased this ranch we purchased a large bison herder there were about 2,400 bison on the ranch and so we made a decision to advertise for a partner who would manage the bison operation in the context of understanding and agreeing that this was a conservation property and the goals weren't going to be like any other ranch so it was a natural choice for us to pick Duke and his family to help us think through and experiment and learn how to manage this property we're managing a bison herd that once lived in the wild with limitless space that had predators and forces of nature that pushed it around and that made it do what it did today that landscape is completely changed in our situation we have a limited space so we have to control the numbers because if the numbers grow beyond what the land can support when you start damaging the ecosystem if your numbers get too high over grazing is inevitable so what we do is as the rancher as the shepherd of the land is try to act as the predator there's coyotes but coyotes nowadays aren't going to take down a bison there's not wolves here anymore so we have to insert ourselves as predators essentially and then remove the right amount depending on how we think the land or the herd needs to be manipulated once a year we've gathered the entire bison herd because we have to maintain certain stocking level so without the land isn't over grazed so part of our job when we came here was to try to get 2,000 head of bison rounded up into a set of pans the bison that are removed from the property are all sold in the marketplace is a high quality product that helps support the entire operation we sell the bison because that's how we keep this going this has to be a profitable deal financially the only income that we have is when we sell animals we have to get these Buffalo in every year there's no choice the great bison herds of the mid-1800s had the entire Great Plains to roam and cleared from Mexico all the way into Canada the sheer scale of the Bison hurts is almost unimaginable their reports of train stopping up several days let one herd line somewhere between 30 and 60 million animals is what we think the population was but between the hunting and the fur trade by 1880 there were probably fewer than a couple of thousand of them left in North America we almost lost this species today we've got between 500 and 600 thousand bison running around in various ranch lands farmlands zoos and other areas but what about bison as a wildlife species or as a conservation species somewhere between about 10 and 20 thousand bison in the world now are strictly conservation bison a conservation herd of bison is a herd that's managed to be wild as possible so the animals are not branded you don't wean the cows you don't separate the young animals you have a 1 to 1 ratio of males to females but this ranch here they're attempting to mimic how it was when the Bison had the entire West and 50,000 acres seems like a big parcel but it's not even a drop of water compared to what they used to have so that presents its own challenges and so can we match up and make a restoration of bison so that they truly are not just in our past and imagery but are really out on the landscape that's what part of our job is here we assume management of the mental spot a ranch we have never been around bison before and we didn't know anything about gathering bison these animals are wild and wildly they have great vision can outrun a horse for a short distance they also can jump and fences that are made to contain bison have to be at least seven feet tall so think of an animal that weighs between 800 and 2,000 pounds being able to jump over my head that makes them a challenge for ranching because when a bison decides it doesn't like something in front of it it just pushes through it the only way we could get the Byfuglien before was chasing him into the Corral's and running by some horse back long enough to where we realize this is not solution Wow someone's gonna get hurt badly we basically figured out a lot better way to do it so today we we've gotten to where we can now gather most of them if not 99% of the men with just brains rather than brawn the Bison works begins right now that's a lot of checking things and these are fences that only get used once a year for this time so they've been sitting propped open all the gates have been opened up to allow bison elk antelope deer everything has free passage when we're not in these three weeks or something leading up to bison work once all the fence is good then we start bringing the Bison from the northern end of the ranch down to the southern slope putting up fences behind them trying to trap them the smaller and smaller area as we come south and then from there we'll start feeding the Bison Cake them and getting them really used to fall in the cake truck around most little won't won't move and that's there is an animal already going in that direction that you want to move so the purpose of the truck is trying to get the lead animals going in the right direction and then the guy back kind of coaxes everything along you're not forcing anything so you're tricking them into going the right direction with the feed truck being kind of starts falling and that's when dude can kind of keep them going so we drive out into the herd and over a period of a week or two we put out maybe quarter pound or less per head I'm gonna blow the horn we have a big railroad kind of horn we're gonna blow that and now we'll get her buy his attention and then we start feeding a little bit of cake a little pellet that they'll all like 45,000 acres in finding 2,000 or more bison out on the range has proved to be pretty challenging mr. an here on the ranch I was really flat once you get down in turn you can't see because the brush is high so the airplane is pretty handy it might seem expensive to run an airplane and all this stuff but relative to all the stress and time and money that we used to put into those eight or ten days with those people it's with fraction on the cost and headache once we get them in close around this headquarters will use the cake truck and a couple motorcycles coming as pushing stragglers to keep up with the herd hopefully they'll all follow and be really ready to go for Saturday morning we're looking forward to a great year gathering the Buffalo I've only work cattle before to be that up close and personal with the Bison it is going to be it's going to be a lot of fun tomorrow morning this all be black and Buffalo so far so good this place is stirred up together some space anything go wrong you never know

Channel: HISTORY

Views: 218,274

Keywords: history, history channel, history shows, history channel shows, ranchlands, watch ranchlands, ranching, herding, cattle, branding, bison, duke phillips, san luis valley, colorado, PLob1mZcVWOajNl3_AC5JvpZW0HMAwukxV

Id: GsjQfWRqCsE

Length: 11min 27sec (687 seconds)

Published: Wed May 18 2016